For those who think that single parents have exciting social lives, here is my weekly schedule:
Mon – Give no.2 son ride to soccer practice. Tues – Give no.1 son ride to tuition(supplementary school lessons) and no.2 son to Tae Kwan Do. Wed – Give no.2 son ride to tuition. Thurs – Catch my breath, sometimes give No.1 son ride to tuition. Fri – Give no.2 son ride to tuition. Sat – Sometimes give rides to both sons to school co-curriculum activities. Sun – Give rides to boys to swimming classes.
My life as the family taxi driver gets to me sometimes. So much of my time is spent on the road and waiting. Sometimes I feel very frustrated. I feel that I could be doing more writing. I know what I want to write if I had the time. Or I could spend more time with people. There is such a relational hunger out there. So many need a friend to ‘waste time’ with them. If only I didn’t have to spend so much time giving rides.
Now I love my boys passionately. It’s just that I wish I had more time to do all this more important stuff. Do any of you out there feel the same way?
Recently I have been reflecting on this feeling of frustration. I was reminded by Philip Yancey that late in his life, the late Henri Nouwen was assigned to look after Adam, the most disabled person in the Daybreak community. Yancey writes:
“Adam was the weakest and most disabled person in the community. Although in his twenties, Adam could not speak, dress or undress himself, could not walk alone or eat without help. Instead of counselling Ivy League students and juggling a busy schedule, Nouwen had to learn a new set of skills: how to feed, change, and bathe Adam, how to support his glass as he drank, how to push his wheelchair over a road full of pot-holes. He ministered not to leaders and intellectuals but to a young man who was considered by many a vegetable, a useless person who should not have been born. Yet Nouwen gradually learned that he, not Adam, was the chief beneficiary in this strange, misfitted relationship. From Adam,(Nouwen) learned that ‘what makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.’ ”
What was I thinking? That in the final analysis, writing books is more important than giving rides to my boys? That doesn’t seem right. In fact it reveals an unhealthy ministry elitism. After all what does God think? Does He think that writing and counselling are more important than giving rides to children?
Writing books and counselling will definitely get me more positive rubs to the old ego. Giving rides to the kids?well sometimes the boys don’t even seem to appreciate what I am doing. (I did receive super gifts from both of them for my birthday though.)
Once again I am forced to re-examine what it means to be doing the work of God. Perhaps in this season of my life I am to be a source of stability for the boys. God knows they have gone through so much. And I am told by many that the boys are healing and maturing.
Besides, I have a sneaky suspicion that God is also doing significant things in my life as I faithfully go about my “taxi driving” duties.
Well, God did say: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. But as the heavens are high above the earth, So are my ways high above your ways And my thoughts above your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8,9 REB
At least the swimming lessons will finish in a couple of months.
PS. I told no.1 son what I thought the Lord had said to me about my frustrations of spending so much time giving rides. In what I thought was a God-like voice, I told him that the Lord had said: “Soo Inn, do you think that giving rides to your sons is any less important than writing?” No.1 son said that God sounded very much like Morpheus from the movie ‘The Matrix.’